Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to means for releasing an input/operation prohibition state for the case in which setting change or operation of devices in an injection molding cell comprising an injection molding machine and its peripheral devices is performed.
Description of the Related Art
In injection molding, moldings are manufactured by a single injection molding cell that is formed of peripheral devices, such as a molding take-out machine, mold temperature controller, and resin dryer, as well as an injection molding machine. Moreover, in order to allow only a specific worker to perform setting change or operation for each of the devices, including the injection molding machine and the molding take-out machine, which constitute the injection molding cell, the injection molding cell is provided with an input lock function or an operation lock function, based on worker identification information from a storage medium, such as a smart card, or a password.
As a prior art technique for identifying a worker for an injection molding machine of this type, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-313043 discloses a data protection method for the injection molding machine in which a molding condition setting function of the injection molding machine is locked by a password. Moreover, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-127218 describes a system in which a person permitted for operation by a password can operate a take-out machine. Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2012-243046 describes how to connect a plurality of production facilities, each including a production machine, fingerprint authentication unit, and control unit, to a fingerprint authentication server through a network so that the fingerprint authentication server may make the production machine operable depending on the level of an operator.
If only a specific worker is allowed to perform setting change or operation of the injection molding machine and its peripheral devices, it is necessary to release an input/operation prohibition state for each of the injection molding machine and the peripheral devices. Therefore, the worker must perform an operation to release the input/operation prohibition state for each of the injection molding machine and the peripheral devices in the injection molding cell although they are all constituent elements of the injection molding cell, so that a complicated work is required. Moreover, since a method for the prohibition state release operation varies depending on the devices, there is also a problem that the worker must learn the release operation method for each device.
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2012-243046 described above, the fingerprint authentication unit must be provided for each production facility, so that the resulting authentication system is expensive. Moreover, as in the cases of the other prior art techniques, the operation for releasing the input/operation prohibition state must be performed for each device, thus entailing a complicated work.